


Wear and Tear

by HoloXam



Series: Wilde Week 2020 Holo Edition [4]
Category: Rusty Quill Gaming (Podcast)
Genre: A Wilde Week 2020 (Rusty Quill Gaming), Angst with a Happy Ending, Dissociation, Implied/Referenced Character Death, M/M, Paris through to RQG176, Resurrection, Spoilers for RQG176, kind of
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-20
Updated: 2020-11-20
Packaged: 2021-03-09 20:20:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 400
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27642005
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HoloXam/pseuds/HoloXam
Summary: It's not exactly survival, but it isn't life, either.For the promptLife | Death | Survival.
Relationships: Zolf Smith/Oscar Wilde
Series: Wilde Week 2020 Holo Edition [4]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2018005
Comments: 11
Kudos: 36
Collections: A Wilde Week 2020





	Wear and Tear

**Author's Note:**

> WHAT ARE DAYS EVEN. Here's day 4 on day 5. Happy Wilde Week <3

He opens his eyes in the back of a locksmith's workshop in Paris. 

He keeps them open. 

Faces. Fire. A dragon. Two dragons. Heat slamming into him, his heart hammering, interspersed with endless hours of deskwork, sorting through nonsensical papers. 

He’s good at it. 

The coffee doesn’t keep him awake, but he hangs on to it like a lifeline. 

It’s not death, but it isn’t life either. It’s like being half-asleep within a dream, trying to force his eyes open, feet wading through heavy, sticky water.

He nods off in a café and wakes up yelling, staff and patrons staring at him as if he's a madman. 

If they only knew.

He loses crew, gains crew, loses track of who fits where in his timeline. Expects to be greeted with a drowning as he racks up to a factory full of horrors and is met with an entirely different brand of hostility. 

It's _fine._

He closes his eyes in Damascus. Doesn't realise that it hurts until Grizzop is yelling at him. 

He opens his eyes in a cell, rested for the first time in gods know how long, and when he snaps his fingers, it doesn't work. 

It's not exactly life, but it is not death either.

He stares at the walls for a long time, the last of his team _gone,_ sitting back with nothing but the certain knowledge that he is alive and that he doesn't know to what purpose. 

He opens his eyes and closes his eyes on the same storm for weeks and weeks and weeks.

He keeps his eyes on communications. Maps. Code. Conspiracy. 

He keeps an eye on his cleric of hope. 

He keeps his eyes on the horizon through the porthole in his cabin, raw landscape traveling past so far beneath him. 

It's not exactly survival, but it isn't life, either. 

He closes his eyes in a box and wakes up as himself. 

He closes his eyes as the deck disappears beneath his feet. No time for thoughts, except, 

_fuck. already?_

He opens his eyes in an empty city. There's something pulling at him, telling him that this is not where he belongs, but he doesn't trust it. This is death— but he doesn't trust it. 

_Go away,_ he tells it. _Someone will be along for me shortly._

He opens his eyes to a set of green ones. There’s magic on his tongue.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading! <3


End file.
